Sunday Spotlight: Shadow Rider by Christine Feehan

Sunday Spotlight is a feature we’re running in 2016. Each week, we will spotlight a release we’re excited about. We’ll be posting exclusive excerpts and being total fangirls. You’ve been warned. 🙂

Holly read and enjoyed this book so much that she wanted both Casee and I to read it as well. I haven’t gotten around to it yet but once Holly started sharing little tid bits from the book, I was completely sold. This book is at the top of my wish list right now. I can’t wait to dig in!

Shadow Rider (Shadow #1) by Christine Feehan.Releases on June 28, 2016 by Jove.

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The #1 New York Times bestselling “queen of paranormal romance”* is back with a sexy new series starring a Chicago crime family that hides a dark, mystical secret…

Whether it’s fast cars or fast women, Stefano Ferraro gets what he wants. When he’s not fodder for the paparazzi, he commands Ferraro family businesses—both legitimate and illegitimate.

While their criminal activity is simply a rumor yet to be proven, no one knows the real truth. The Ferraros are a family of shadow riders capable of manipulating light and dark, an ability Stefano thought ran in his family alone—until now…

With little left to her name, Francesca Cappello has come to Chicago in hopes of a new life. She wasn’t expecting to attract the attention of a man with primal hunger in his eyes, driven to claim her as his to protect and to please. And if he discovers her secret, it could ruin her…

I’m very interested in getting to know this Stefano Ferraros a lot better.

Excerpt

The moment the wheels touched down on the runway in Los Angeles, Stefano unbuckled his seat belt and looked across the narrow aisle at his two brothers. “Is everything set?”

Ricco nodded. “The Lacey twins are meeting us and bringing a couple of friends. We’ll party with them at the local hot spot and be very visible.”

Stefano shook his head. “The Lacey twins? Again? Seriously, Ricco?”

“They’re hot right now. The roles they get are prime and the paparazzi follow them everywhere. They’re perfect. We’ll be splashed all over every gossip rag there is. By tomorrow morning, the Internet will blow up with pictures and speculation.”

“You want me to believe you chose them because they’ll give you a lot of exposure?” Stefano pinned him with a glare. “You like fucking them both.”

“Well.” Ricco grinned at him. “There’s that. It also gives me a chance to practice the art of Shibari. I like to keep my skills sharp.”

“You like to fuck them after you tie them up, and that’s going to come back to bite you in the ass,” Stefano declared, his voice mild, but there was nothing mild about the look he gave his brother. “It isn’t like the gossip is going to go away when the pictures and articles are everywhere. You can’t exactly deny it. You find your woman and how are you going to convince her one woman will be enough for you when you’re always with two?”

The smile faded from Ricco’s face, leaving it bleak, a stone mask. “The chances of that happening are like one in a million. This woman coming into our territory is a fluke, Stefano. We all know that. More, you have a long road ahead of you. Nothing guarantees that she stays.”

Stefano went still inside. He knew Ricco was right, and he was also wrong. Fate was strange—one moment giving no hope and the next handing the world to a man. Not the world—a glimpse of what might be. He sighed. Who was he to lecture his brother? He’d done a few crazy things, but not publicly, not so if he ever found a woman to call his own, he would be ashamed. Binding a woman to him, forcing her to accept his life was going to be a difficult enough task, but he would do it. Now that he knew there was a possibility of having her, he would make it a reality. There was no other choice for him—or for her.

“You have a point,” he conceded in a low voice. “It is your life, Ricco, and what you choose to do is for you to decide. Just know that if your woman does walk into your life, asking her to live with our name, within the rules of our family is a big enough curse. What else do you have to offer her?”

Across from him, Vittorio stirred. “Are you certain this woman is one that you can bind to you?”

Vittorio. Always the peacemaker in the family. Stefano smiled at him. It wasn’t an easy smile because Stefano, even with his own family members, rarely felt like smiling, but it was there all the same because Vittorio was such a good man. Stefano was always proud of him. They needed to hear how the miracle had happened. They knew, from watching other family members, that finding a shadow rider outside the family was a rare phenomenon and none of them had ever believed it would happen to them.

Stefano knew his brothers needed hope. Ricco, especially. He was wild. Sometimes out of control wild. Not with the family business, of course. Then he was stone cold and all about business, but he took risks. Too many. He was the best driver in the family, and they were all good, but Ricco often needed the adrenaline rush of fast speeds just to keep him sane.

In another family, Ricco would have been an artist. In their family, creativity was only about the ability to find ways to carry out their work. Ricco had turned to the erotic form of Shibari to satisfy both his need for creating art as well as his sexual needs. He was darker than his brothers, and more prone to violence and chance taking, yet his work was impeccable.

Stefano sighed. His brothers needed to know there was hope. “I felt an electrical charge in the air and found it disturbing. I thought it was a bad thing, a premonition of something coming that our family would have to deal with. The need to stay there was so strong, I couldn’t leave. Even knowing we had to be on a flight for work didn’t matter. Nothing else mattered enough to make me leave.”

Stefano didn’t know why he admitted to his brothers how little control he had had when he should have gotten into his car and driven straight to the airport, but he knew he had to tell the truth. To be precise about the facts. It was important.

“I was standing by my car, out in the street by the driver’s side door. If I had ignored that compulsion to stay, I would have gotten in, driven away and I would never have seen her.” That needed to be said. His brothers had to stay alert. Be aware.

“There’s a tradition in our family,” Vittorio said. “When the first arrives, the others will follow.”

“It didn’t happen for our cousins in London,” Ricco said. “None of them married or had children. Nor did the ones in Sicily.”

Stefano kept going. He could give them this. A moment in his life he knew he would never forget. He would share what he considered a private, perfect, almost frightening moment. “I heard her voice first. She responded to something Joanna Masci said to her. That note in her voice turned the key, unlocking something deep inside of me. I felt it like a terrible wrenching inside. Everything in me reached for her. For that note she left hanging in the air. I heard the music in me answer.”

He fell silent a moment, reliving that moment in time that had changed everything in his world. His heart had pounded in his chest. Hard. So hard it actually hurt. Physically hurt. He could go into a room full of enemies and his heart rate never once elevated, yet hearing that musical note in the air had acted like a key, unlocking a matching note in his body and throwing his iron composure.

About the Author

Christine Feehan

Christine Feehan is a #1 New York Times bestselling author multiple times over with her portfolio including over 50 published novels, including five series; Dark Series, Ghostwalker Series, Leopard Series, Drake Sisters Series, & the Sisters of the Heart Series. All five series hit the #1 spot on the New York Times bestselling list as well. Her debut novel Dark Prince received 3 of the 9 Paranormal Excellence Awards in Romantic Literature (PEARL) in 1999. Since then she has been published by various publishing houses including Leisure Books, Pocket Books, and currently is writing for Berkley/Jove. She also has earned 7 more PEARL awards since Dark Prince.

IN HER WORDS:
I’ve been a writer all of my life — it is who I am. I write for myself and always have. The ability to create pictures and emotions with words is such a miracle to me. I read everything; I mean everything! All kinds of books, even encyclopedias. I am fascinated by the written word and I love storytellers. It is a great privilege to be counted one myself.

Quote of the Week

“You will be a wonderful queen. Kind, caring, compassionate. Strong, cunning, and ruthless when you need to be. But I can’t break my promise to myself. I won’t. Not even for you, highness.” The last word came out as a low whisper, but somehow, it shattered my heart more than if he had been shouting curses at me.”

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